Mothers

Yesterday an appalling media platform was given to the mother of a mass murderer, who did an imitation of Treyvon Martin's mother in a grossly inappropriate speech blankly denying any responsibility for her son's condition which led to the loss of lives on a U.S. Navy base in Washington, D.C.. Ms. Alexis may have been honest when she said flatly, "My heart is broken." However, the tragedy-queen tenor of her speech rang hollow in my ears. It seemed to me she simply wanted to be a celebrity, even a celebrity mother of a murderous schizophrenic. 

Most human cultures enshrine birth and motherhood as sacred totems. This is all wrapped up with religious imagery and unscientific nonsense about the "miracle" of reproduction. When bacteria reproduce infectious offspring, do we laud this as a miracle times millions? No, we strive to sterilize the bacteria and eradicate their offspring as quickly as possible. 

We are living in a society in the U.S where murdering children and adolescents are becoming commonplace. Gang shootings are often performed by minors intentionally to avoid a lengthy adult prison sentence for the perpetrator if he/she is caught. Recently, the misguided bleeding-hearts in the Massachusetts government have decided to reverse rational laws which tried adolescents 17 and over as adults for murder. I am sure drug dealers associated with gangs will now have an easier time recruiting adolescents to commit drive-by shootings. 

Where do these murderous children come from? They were all born of mothers. And what responsibility do we place on those mothers as a society for the malicious products of their mothering? None. On the contrary, as a result of a misguided feminism which enshrines reproduction as a sacred right (not responsibility), any woman can have as many children as she wishes. This includes severely psychotic women, women with HIV and other diseases known to be transmissible by birth, women who are impoverished and incapable of providing for their offspring at inception. In fact, public policy enables and actually encourages dysfunctional women to have children. Why?

The answer is fairly simple. Very few human beings ever take the time to struggle with and seek resolution of their circumstances of birth as it pertains to their relationships with parents, especially mothers. Religious and cultural taboos against growing up in this way are still strongly enforced in most cultures. The child who confronts the unfairness of his birth with his mother is perceived as ungrateful for the sacred gift of life. Absurd. What is the great gift of a life of slavish labor, hunger and poverty? It is not a gift. It is a lifelong curse and a sentence passed at birth in many places on the planet. 

And what of the mother of Aaron Alexis? She apologized for her son's behavior and denied an understanding of how he happened to turn out like that. Really? Paranoid schizophrenia and other major psychotic disorders are discernible very early in child development. Family history of mental illness is a major indicator for caution and observation. For the educated and responsible, a family history of a major psychotic illness would raise the question of whether or not to reproduce at all. This is the point which determines whether having a baby is about the parental neediness or the child's future. The poor in all states in the U.S. have health care programs for women and children, sponsored by the Federal government. Mothers need only care enough to access it. 

A majority of births in the developed world are still claimed as accidental by birth mothers. The vast majority of pregnancies in the underdeveloped world are unplanned. This is mass female ignorance and/or irresponsibility on the scale of billions with the rare exception of women who are impregnated by rape. 

I am male. I am homosexual. I understand my perspective on reproduction is outside the usual realm of heterosexual reproduction. However, I have known many homosexual men who have intentional produced children with women who were unaware they were carrying the child of a man who preferred other men sexually. Many of these women have deep rage and resentment after discovering this reality, but did they decide to bring a child to life because of their sex lives or because they wanted selflessly to provide a good life for their offspring in order to improve the world? 

This is by no means a misogynist's rant. I chose to work most of my life as a medical nurse in the company of and under the supervision of women. I have had good friendships with a wide variety of educated, liberated and feminist women. Some of them have become mothers and grandmothers.

I am the unwanted second child of a mother who once told me so. To her credit, despite her rage and occasional violence, she gave me some valuable tools to develop my own identity and to prosper. It was a long and painful road of 61 years to work on our relationship until her death. I managed her end-of-life care for her, because she had a brain tumor. She was never able to surrender her anger at me for being born, even at the end. So, my compassion is extended primarily to those who are born of mothers who are incapable or unwilling to love and nurture. My anger over the commonality of this process is aimed primarily at the institutions which foster female ignorance and oppression. I experience disappointment when I encounter any woman who is unwilling to accept deep responsibility for those she has brought into the world or is planning to bring into the world.